A Knowing Conversation with Mum

Mum: Have you been to the new Coles, well you can’t find anything, it’s just too big, they have to have directions for things written on the trolley. I needed cooking oil and the trolley said aisle five and I went there, up and down, up and down and there was no cooking oil there at all. The aisles are so wide and there are too many of them and too many things no one needs. That must happen to you.

Me: I generally use a basket.

Mum: So what do they put it on the trolley for, their own amusement or something? All these people wandering around looking for things. That’s a big joke. Do they watch it on a little camera or something and laugh themselves silly. Hard to spend money when you can’t find anything. My weekly shopping bill has gone down. I suppose that’s good. The steel wool is in the right place though, so you should be able to find that. You probably don’t use steel wool. And then I asked Hailey what the price of her hamburger was and she said, I dunno and she’d just had it half an hour before so how could she not know?

Me: Um, I don’t know?

Mum: That’s where she gets it from then, you.

Me: What?

Mum: It wasn’t like it was takeaway, she had it in the restaurant. How can she not know?

Me: What, I have no idea what you’re talking about?

Mum: This I don’t know thing. You should know things like that – value for money. You’re always saying you don’t know.

Me: You do ask difficult questions.

Mum: What difficult questions?

Me: You just asked me if I knew how Hailey didn’t know the price of her hamburger. How can I possibly know that?

Me: We didn’t go. It didn’t happen. You want me to know about something that didn’t happen.

Mum: But you’d have gone somewhere if she’d been well.

Me: Yes.

Mum: So where?

Me: How does this matter, it didn’t happen.

Mum: You should know.

Me: We’d have found somewhere open.

Mum: Where?

Me: Sigh. I don’t know!

Mum: No wonder the children are like they are – they listen to you. What are you doing about the side fence?

Me: I need to talk to the neighbours, get a second quote, so I don’t know, yet. I guess that will annoy you, even though it’s just like the fact I don’t know where we’d have gone to breakfast if we’d have gone.